Columnist Dean Juipe: Both Chiefs and Vermeil seem crazy

Dean Juipe

Friday, Jan. 5, 2001 | 10:29 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Retirement strikes different people different ways.

Some adjust comfortably, particularly if they're financially set. They relax, they travel, they do all the things they couldn't do back when they were accumulating their nest egg.

Others find the free time too monotonous. There are only so many books to read, only so many excursions to take, only so many memories to relive.

Dick Vermeil apparently falls into the latter category. Despite wealth and fame, at 64 years old he's easily bored.

How else to explain the almost ridiculous plan of his to come out of retirement -- for a second time -- and coach in the National Football League, as he apparently is ready to do with the Kansas City Chiefs?

It's not a crime to go back on your word but it leaves a sour taste with those who were throwing you bouquets for, in Vermeil's case, retiring at the top of his game. Eleven months later he's saying "Never mind" and rejoining a work force that favors a younger man.

When he said he was quitting as head coach of the St. Louis Rams after his team unexpectedly won the 2000 Super Bowl, Vermeil was lauded for his stellar career.

Now he deserves to be assailed -- or compared to quit-and-come-back boxers like Sugar Ray Leonard and Evander Holyfield who routinely retired only to return for additional abuse -- for a decision that, frankly, makes no sense at this point in time.

The Chiefs -- who need their heads examined as well -- are ready to hire Vermeil for what will be his third stint as a pro coach. From 1976 through '82 he ran the Philadelphia Eagles, then he "retired" for 15 years until coming back to coach the Rams for three seasons.

Certainly no one begrudged him for accepting the Rams' invitation, even if he had been away from the sidelines (and in a broadcasting booth) for so many years. But to come back again, and with the mediocre Chiefs, is a bamboozling decision from any perspective.

If it were the New York Jets who piqued Vermeil's interest you could argue that a second comeback was marginally understandable in that the Jets -- who are currently looking for a new coach after Al Groh bolted this week -- are playoff material. But the Chiefs were 7-9 this past season and Vermeil may be an old, old man by the time they're ready for the limelight again.

Vermeil has to be thinking the Chiefs have the potential to duplicate what his Rams team did last year. He has to be envisioning a year or two of steady growth, followed by a championship-caliber season.

He has to be thinking "I'll show you guys who don't think I can do this again" and that the Chiefs will climb the same heights as the Rams once did.

But he's dreaming.

He should leave well enough alone and stay in his rocking chair.

It would be one thing if he had been forced out by the Rams and sent home against his wishes. But it was his call to retire and his good fortune to do it at a time when he was coaching the world champions.

To come back again, to take over a marginal team, forces Vermeil to be seen in a different light.

If things really go wrong, his legacy will need an addendum. He'll be seen as an old fool.